


Scorched Earth

by brightly_lit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Kindness, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 04:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16486013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_lit/pseuds/brightly_lit
Summary: How do you mourn everyone you've ever loved, and what becomes of you when they're gone?Major character death, and then some (all off-page).





	Scorched Earth

Sam stopped at a small-town diner. He ordered a double bacon cheeseburger, all the extras, and dug in, the grease streaming down his chin. His mouth stuffed full when the waitress stopped by to ask if he needed anything else, he gestured at the pie display, trying to indicate he wanted the cherry. Somehow, she figured out what he meant and brought him a slice. He nodded his thanks, wiping at the mess he’d made of his face with a thin, small napkin that could never hope to get the job done.

He spent some time in the bathroom after he was done eating, trying to make himself presentable. He spent a long time in there, aware other customers were beginning to line up, but as often as he wiped them and washed his face, his eyes kept welling up. He finally gave up and went back out, meaning to just toss down a twenty and get out of there before he broke down completely, but the waitress caught him. 

Maybe it was all those years of fighting monsters and demons, that training kicking in, that made his tear ducts dry up instantly the second duty called, no matter what was going on. Somehow every interaction these days felt like a battle for his life.

“Just passing through?” she asked. Habitually, he peered into her eyes, looking for signs of deceit, of ulterior motive--angel? demon? something else?--but all he found there was kindness.

“Uh ... actually, I’m here to see some old friends.”

Her eyes lit up. “Oh, really? Who? I know everybody,” she said with a grin. “Town this size ....”

“Oh, uh, they, uh ... are outside of town, kind of in the boonies.”

It wasn’t that she thought she wouldn’t still know whoever it was that made her stop asking; it was that she could tell he didn’t want to say. She let him go, but not without a gentle pat to the back and an admonition to eat more. Seemed like he got this kind of reaction a lot. “Stop back here on your way out of town,” she said. “We’ll feed you up right.”

He hoped what registered on his face was some semblance of a smile as he waved and got back in the Impala, heading for the low mountains that rose from this valley, though he had to make a few stops along the way.

Simple human kindness. It was everywhere--in the helpful clerk at the gas station when the pump didn’t start, in the florist at the grocery store when he couldn’t seem to decide what he wanted, in the hotel clerk who gave him a discount when, fumbling, Sam spilled the pockets of his jacket onto the counter and discovered to his bewilderment that he didn’t have enough to cover a room for the night. Once upon a time, he would never have made such a mistake, but now, it was commonplace, and for everything he couldn’t manage, for every failure and hapless stumble and goof-up, somehow, someone was usually there and willing to make up for his lacks. It was a good thing; he might not have even made it this long otherwise.

It was strange, too. After a lifetime of betrayal and violence, neverending battling with angels and demons, monsters, and yes, humans too, it was perhaps the strangest thing of all to be so helpless and to encounter only kindness and generosity despite his being such easy pickings these days. Once upon a time, an angel or demon could have come upon him in this state and he’d have hardly been able to put up a fight before they ended him, but the angels and the demons were all gone. 

He might not always be able to find his way through old familiar cities these days anymore, but the way to where he was headed now was eternally burned into him. Sometimes even when he meant to go someplace else, someplace far from here, he found himself back on this road, the Impala’s powerful engine roaring as she effortlessly took on the steep climb.

There wasn’t road all the way to where he had to go, but there was a clear spot devoid of trees where he could park her. It was only a mile or so beyond that to the field where lay his friends--all of them.

Bobby, Charlie. Sam had buried them up on that hill over there, so they could look out upon the valley, watch the sun rise over it every morning, shelter in the lee of the trees when the weather turned cruel. Jack was just there, in that patch of wild lupine. They reminded Sam of Jack’s eyes. Mom lay here, under this tree. He didn’t have a particular reason for choosing this spot; it just felt right, pressed against the bosom of the alpine valley where it opened up into the meadow where Dean and Cas lay. 

Sam could still just barely make out the black outlines of their wings where they had burned all the vegetation beneath them in the explosion of light that was their deaths. Grass had grown up through the outlines in the couple years since then--had it really already been so long?--but Sam knew from when he dug through them with his fingers when it first happened, crazed with grief, that the blackness went deep, maybe all the way; it was black as far as he dug, long past when his nails tore and his fingers were coated in his own blood. The death of an angel would not be so easily forgotten by the earth. 

By the people of the Earth, though ... Sam was the only one who remembered, who even knew what transpired here, that it was the end of heaven, the end of hell, as Lucifer’s spawn en masse surprised Michael here and overcame him, the massacre that claimed them all, and Cas too, who fought to save his brother, but really to save Sam’s.

Sam had set a rose upon Mom’s grave as he passed, and another upon Jack’s. He saved out one each for Bobby and for Charlie. He set the orchid the kind florist helped him select upon the spot where Cas had died, and the rest of the bouquet right next to it, upon the place Dean had spent his final moments, even if he wasn’t the one in charge of his body when it happened. Sam couldn’t quite remember where he’d buried their bodies up here, half-insane when he did it, desperate to get them out of the rain, since their bodies were so cold, but it didn’t matter; this burned spot was their true final resting place.

Sam sat on the ground next to his brother and his best friend, and looked out over the valley with all his friends, smiling, as he imagined they must be smiling. At this time of year, in spring, the ground was cold under him (though, he could swear, a little warmer where their wings had been), and the sun was hot on his head. The breeze had a bite, rattling through the leaves of the trees. Animals were active, running around, blissfully unaware of all the carnage and sorrow over which their little feet trampled. In this field of death, there was lots of new life, baby animals creeping out to frolic as Sam simply sat there, plainly no danger to anyone.

Someday, the earth would end--soon, Sam sometimes thought. Someday, surely, his own life would end--soon, he often hoped. Sitting in this meadow with everyone he’d ever loved, it felt like these things had already come to pass. 

He lay back against the outline of Dean and pressed his face against the ground, trying to imagine some part of Dean still there, warm and welcoming, instead of cold and prickly weeds. He wept into the earth, clawing at the grass where his brother once lay, sobs wracking his body until he couldn’t breathe. There were no words for this kind of sorrow and loss, no way a human could express the depth of it; he could only live through it. 

Some minutes or hours later, he managed to rouse himself, brushing dirt and dead grass and a few little bugs from his face and hair, and climbed the hill to leave Bobby and Charlie their roses. He stood a long time again over where Dean and Cas lay, their wings entwined, paused again beside Jack and Mom, then headed back to the Impala, back to town, back to the diner for dinner, as if in a dream. 

All his friends in that valley couldn’t stay alive, and Sam somehow did, though he was at that battle too. It was as if he couldn’t die, but all of him was back in that meadow. This life now was just watching through eyes in some body that didn’t feel like his own a movie that could barely hold his interest, until the screen finally went black.

At the diner, the waitress was glad to see him. “More pie?” she asked knowingly. “That’ll get more meat on your bones in a hurry.”

He smiled politely. Even when everything else was gone, some things remained, Sam had discovered. It would never have occurred to him that he had anything left one could call a personality, yet he found himself acting and reacting in all the same old ways, even if there was nothing behind it at all, completely empty inside. “Sure, why not?” he said. She beamed, and he tried to smile in return. 

A minute later, he remembered he had no money after paying what little he had to the hotel. He got up to tell her as she was getting his pie out of the display case. It would be a long, hungry night at the hotel, and morning, and maybe beyond that, but nowadays, it seemed he was always starving in one way or another. “I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed, turning out his pockets for her to see. “I don’t have anything left.”

“It’s okay, honey,” she said, pity suffusing her features. “It’s okay, you just sit back down. Dinner’s on me.”


End file.
